The Sunday Drive - 07/28/2024 Edition [#121]
Musings and Meanderings of a Financial Provocateur
👋🏼 Hello friends,
Greetings from Saratoga Springs, NY. Let’s enjoy a leisurely Sunday Drive around the Internet.
🎶 Vibin'
My wife and I celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary this week. It is really wild to reach the point in your life where you’ve been married for several more years of your life than you’ve not been married. It’s been quite an amazing and wonderful journey we’ve taken together and I feel very Blessed to have her in my life. So this week, I’m vibin’ to Eddie Money’s 1977 hit song, Two Tickets to Paradise. Enjoy.
💭 Quote of the Week
“Three secrets to success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along with and work with other people.“
— Sally Ride
📈 Chart of the Week
I can’t recall where I found this week’s Chart, but I do know when I saw it that I should save it to share with you. Using data from the Atlanta Fed, it captures the annualized one month percentage change in inflation (ex-shelter) for the last 20 years.
What we see is how breathtakingly disruptive the Pandemic was to the historically rather stable rate of change in month-to-month inflation. The low occurred in April 2020 when essentially the entire world economy was on forced hiatus. The high occurred a mere three months later when the global economy came vrooming back to life in July of 2020.
It’s taken a few years and a never before seen rapid interest rate cycle from the Federal Reserve, but it’s beginning to look like the whole inflation thing really was transitory after all. Now, we’re back to the long term average of an annualized 2% inflation rate. 🤷🏼♂️
Here’s hoping that month-to-month inflation starts to return to its prior levels of (low) volatility and the Federal Reserve can begin lowering interest rates so monetary policy can return to something that feels more normal.
To me, not much else in the world is feeling very normal these days.
🚙 Interesting Drive-By's
✌🏻 Passing the Torch - from Brian Clark [Link]
💸 Sequence Risk Can’t Be Ignored - from Rethinking65 [Link]
💡 Vibes Are a Legitimate Economic Indicator - from Evan Armstrong [Link]
👋🏼 Great Resignation 2.0 Could Be On the Horizon - from Fox Business [Link]
🤔 The Return to Office Productivity Argument is Over - from Joe Procopio [Link]
👋🏼 Parting Thought
I’m sad to report that I am officially old, because there is not a single one of these to which I could answer, “No”.
If you have any cool articles or ideas that might be interesting for future Sunday Drive-by's, please send them along or tweet 'em (X ‘em?) at me.
Please note that the content in The Sunday Drive is intended for informational purposes only, and is in no way intended to be financial, legal, tax, marital, or even cooking advice. Consult your own professionals as needed. The views expressed in The Sunday Drive are mine alone, and are not necessarily the views of Investment Research Partners or Cache Financials.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend and a great week ahead. See you next Sunday...
Your faithful financial provocateur,
-Mike
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